Tony Tan

[Tony Tan @TonyTanNM]

When these chicken-shit "hawks" are "staring at ageing tankers, spare-part shortages, maintenance gaps, delayed systems, fragile space infrastructure, and asking whether the bridge across the Pacific can even hold" their balls shrivel, shit in their pants, and scream 'China bad!'

[𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘦 @OopsGuess]

The funniest part about American war hawks is that they are always the loudest people yelling about war with China, while quietly asking the same question behind closed doors:

Can we actually sustain it?

The U.S. can project power across the world.
But projection is not endurance.

A war across the Pacific is not a movie trailer.
It is fuel, tankers, spare parts, maintenance, shipyards, logistics, industrial capacity, replacement rates, repair cycles, satellite resilience, and political stamina.

And suddenly the empire discovers that slogans do not refuel aircraft.

The same people who talk about fighting China as if it were another bombing campaign against a weak country are now staring at ageing tankers, spare-part shortages, maintenance gaps, delayed systems, fragile space infrastructure, and asking whether the bridge across the Pacific can even hold.

That is the real fear.

China does not need to cross the Pacific to fight America.
America has to cross the Pacific to fight China.

That distance is not a detail.
It is the battlefield.

For decades, Washington confused global reach with infinite strength.
Now it is learning that power projection is expensive, fragile, and very different from industrial depth.

The war hawks still want the performance.
The system is quietly asking whether the empire can survive the logistics.

[Tony Tan @TonyTanNM]

THANK YOU, NORWAY! More nations please!

[Palestina En Español 🎒 @PalestinaVence]

Noruega le da una paliza histórica a Israel y dona TODAS las ganancias del partido a Palestina.

Noruega aplastó 5-0 a Israel y celebró con una alegría que se sintió en todo el mundo.

Pero lo más poderoso no fue solo el resultado: el equipo y la federación noruega decidieron donar el 100% de los ingresos del partido a Palestina.Esto no es solo fútbol.

Es una declaración política clara y valiente en medio del Mundial 2026. Mientras Israel sigue con su campaña de destrucción en Gaza y Líbano, y amenaza a Irán, Noruega elige ponerse del lado correcto de la historia.Un país que entiende el valor de la solidaridad y la justicia.

Un equipo que transforma una victoria deportiva en ayuda concreta para un pueblo que sufre ocupación y masacres.

Este gesto contrasta fuertemente con la hipocresía de la FIFA y de varios gobiernos occidentales que protegen a Israel pese a todo.

Gracias, Noruega.

El mundo necesita más acciones concretas como esta.

¿Qué opinas tú?

¿Crees que más selecciones deberían seguir el ejemplo de Noruega?

Comenta, comparte y celebra esta victoria con significado.

[江樾禾 @feihuo17]

美国主持人问高志凯：若台湾不愿回归，你们会怎么做？高志凯：那就重启内战模式，像当年你们的林肯总统一样！

[Tony Tan @TonyTanNM]

"The Philippines faces an existential threat" FROM USA turning PH into an Asian Ukraine, another proxy of US war and hegemony!

[Brian Berletic @BrianJBerletic]

The Philippines faces an existential threat.

No, not "Chinese expansionism in the South CHINA Sea," but the fact the Philippines is LITERALLY OCCUPIED by US troops who are forcing the country to divert national resources from development to proxy war - into turning the Philippines into the "Ukraine" of Southeast Asia against China, the Philippines' largest trading partner.

If the people of the Philippines do not reverse US occupation and oust the US client regime in power now - they will suffer a fate at least as bad as Ukraine.

They are already suffering decades-spanning poverty because of their status as a proxy serving US interests at the expense of the Philippines' actual interests.

Source - Manila Times: https://t.co/zio1wZWsz1

This is one the Philippines' Independence Day - guess who they gained independence from?

The US - they were literally an outright colony of the US - when they first fought for independence against US occupation and control, the US instituted concentration camps and systematic torture - this according to the US State Department's OWN account:

"The war was brutal on both sides. U.S. forces at times burned villages, implemented civilian reconcentration policies, and employed torture on suspected guerrillas..."

Source - US State Department, Office of the Historian: https://t.co/vMUpPeXtR6

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

The year is 1949.

The Nobel Prize in Medicine has just gone to the man who invented the lobotomy. Your doctor suggests one for your sister, who has not been herself since the baby came. It is the most celebrated advance in psychiatry of the age, and he is simply current. By the time the prize curdles into an embarrassment, close to twenty thousand Americans have had the operation, and proportionally more here in Britain.

The year is 1956.

Lay the baby down on his front, the doctor says. So does the most trusted childcare book ever written, the one on every new mother's shelf. On his back he might choke, the reasoning goes. Millions obey. The advice holds for nearly thirty years, long after the evidence has quietly turned, and a generation of cot deaths is counted before anyone thinks to roll the babies over.

The year is 1966.

A bestselling book informs your wife that menopause is a disease, that she is, in the author's word, a castrate, and that a small daily pill will keep her youthful and tolerable to live with. Her doctor agrees. The drug becomes one of the most prescribed in the country. Nobody mentions that the author sat on the payroll of the company that made it. That detail surfaces decades later, in the same year the landmark trial is halted early for raising rates of breast cancer, stroke and clots.

The year is 1979.

Your ulcer is caused by stress and sharp food, the doctor explains. Calm down, drink milk, take the antacid that happens to be the best-selling medicine on earth. Two Australians are about to prove that most ulcers are caused by a bacterium and cured by a fortnight of antibiotics. The profession laughs. One of them eventually drinks a beaker of the stuff to settle the matter. The establishment takes the better part of twenty years to stop laughing. The Nobel lands in 2005.

The year is 1985.

Butter is dangerous, the doctor says. Switch to margarine, it is modern, it is heart-healthy, the experts are united. The spread he nudges you toward is loaded with trans fats, which the next decade will identify as the genuinely dangerous one, and which will eventually be banned outright. The butter goes quietly back in the fridge. No correction is ever printed at the volume of the original warning.

The year is 1992.

There is a pyramid on the surgery wall, and the very same one in your grandchild's classroom. Bread, cereal, rice and pasta form the broad virtuous base, up to eleven servings a day. Fat is exiled to the tiny tip. The chart was reportedly held back a year while the relevant industries had their say. It is wrong at the bottom and wrong at the top.

Now it is today.

Your doctor has new guidelines, new studies, a fresh consensus, delivered with precisely the steady confidence of every guideline above. He believes it, and he has good reason to. So did every doctor in this thread. None of them were villains. Each was sincere, most were kind, and all were certain, reading from a map that somebody else had drawn and handed them. That is the part worth sitting with.

So when the man in the white coat tells you what to eat, what to fear, and what to swallow every morning for the rest of your life, you are allowed to ask. Who paid for the study. What the evidence says beneath the headline. What he was just as certain about thirty years ago, and where that advice sits now.

Then make up your own mind. Call it scepticism, or call it whatever your grandmother called it when she ignored the advert, kept the butter where it was, and lived to ninety-one.

It has outlasted every consensus on this list. It will outlast this one too.

[𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘦 @OopsGuess]

This is the colonial fantasy Singapore still cannot quit:
that today’s China is still the China of the 1980s, waiting for a small entrepôt state to “advise” it on how to behave.

Please.
China is no longer poor, isolated, or dependent on Singapore’s approval.

Lee Kuan Yew is your god, not China's.
You are a tiny U.S.-aligned broker trying to lecture a civilizational power on how it should react to Japan’s remilitarization.

Japan invaded Singapore.
Japan massacred Singaporeans.
Japan is the country whose militarism once turned Asia into a graveyard.

Yet here you are, saying the “biggest danger” is not Japan rearming, but China reacting to it.

You remember Japanese aggression just enough to justify Singapore’s fear.
But not enough to condemn Japan’s return to militarism.

You remember China’s weakness in the 1980s.
But not enough to understand that China has changed.

Singapore can ignore Japan’s remilitarization if it wants. It can trade memory for survival, comfort, and Western approval.
But stop pretending your small-state anxiety gives you the right to manage China’s red lines.

China does not need Singapore’s permission to remember history.
And it certainly does not need Singapore’s approval to defend its security.

[Tony Tan @TonyTanNM]

"Singapore’s leadership sided with Japan and criticized China for remembering history after Japan provoked China on the Taiwan question.

...For many Chinese people, betraying one’s own blood, memory, and historical suffering is worse than being an external enemy."

[𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘦 @OopsGuess]

Chinese netizens’ negative perception of Singapore largely stems from one core issue:
Singapore’s leadership sided with Japan and criticized China for remembering history after Japan provoked China on the Taiwan question.

This is why Chinese netizens’ contempt toward Singapore runs so deep — sometimes even deeper than their contempt toward open adversaries.

To many Chinese people, Singapore’s behavior represents a particular kind of betrayal.

As an ethnic Chinese-majority country, Singapore should have a natural understanding of the trauma Japan inflicted on the Chinese people — including the brutal Japanese occupation of Singapore itself, such as the Sook Ching massacre.

Instead, Singapore’s leadership downplays or sidesteps Japanese historical aggression, cozies up to Japan strategically, and then has the audacity to lecture China to “move on” from history.

That crosses several Chinese red lines at once:
Historical memory.
Ethnic and civilizational loyalty.
Dignity.
Backbone.

In the eyes of many Chinese netizens, Singapore has chosen self-colonization for survival and geopolitical positioning.

It willingly distances itself from mainland China, aligns with former colonizers and their allies, suppresses its own historical memory, and still benefits from being ethnically Chinese whenever convenient.

That is why Chinese netizens so often describe Singapore’s political class as “殖物” — self-colonized creatures of empire.

To them, Singapore is no longer seen as a genuine overseas Chinese community with historical memory.
It is seen as a traitorous outpost that has internalized the worldview of its former and current masters.

This is also why Chinese netizens’ criticism of Singapore often feels more personal and venomous than their criticism of many other countries.

For many Chinese people, betraying one’s own blood, memory, and historical suffering is worse than being an external enemy.

It is seen as a profound moral and civilizational failure.

[💧Mary Kostakidis @MaryKostakidis]

Jonathan Cook:
How Israel planned the Gaza genocide decades
‘These accounts are nearly 60 years old, published last week by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz under the headline “We were ordered to kill”.
Israeli soldiers interviewed shortly after the 1967 war – often referred to as the Six-Day War – not only confessed that they and others routinely committed war crimes’
The genocide has been going on for decades.
https://t.co/RvaREjvuya

[𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘦 @OopsGuess]

China’s warning about Japan’s re-militarization is not just a warning to Tokyo.

It is a warning to the entire region.

Japan’s economy has fallen back to roughly its 1992 level in nominal dollar terms, while China has grown into the world’s second-largest economy.

China’s military spending has long remained below 1.5% of GDP.

Even if Japan pushes defense spending to 5% of its GDP, it still cannot match China’s scale, industrial capacity, military R&D, shipbuilding, missile production, or strategic depth.

So let us be honest:
Japan’s re-militarization is not a real military threat to China.
Japan cannot fight China.

The real danger is to the smaller countries that keep telling China to “move on” from history.

Japan once invaded, occupied, burned, raped, enslaved, and massacred across Asia.

China.
Korea.
The Philippines.
Indonesia.
Singapore.
Malaysia.
Vietnam.
Myanmar.
Cambodia.
Laos.

Half of Asia remembers what Imperial Japan did.
Or at least it should.

The reason Japan has behaved like a “peaceful country” after 1945 is not because Japanese militarism suddenly grew a conscience.
It is because the postwar order pulled out the beast’s fangs.
And because China became too strong to be swallowed again.

Now, as the U.S.-led order weakens, Japan’s Neo-fascist forces are testing the cage.

They call it “defense.”
They call it “counterstrike capability.”
They call it “normalization.”

But Asia has heard these words before.
Japan has always known how to dress aggression in polite language.

Today Japan does not dare confront China directly.
So it provokes China, hides behind Washington, cries about Chinese “bullying,” and performs weakness for the Western press.

That theater creates a useful illusion:
Japan is peaceful.
China is aggressive.

But the real historical danger is not that Japan will defeat China.
It is that Japan will once again turn its militarism toward countries that cannot fight back.

And here is the part those countries should understand:
China will not sacrifice Chinese soldiers to protect client states that choose the “Indo-Pacific” containment camp and help Tokyo and Washington pressure China.

The Chinese people would not allow it.

If some countries believe they can cut themselves off from China, stand with Japan, erase history, and become “higher-class Asians” under the U.S. umbrella, then they should prepare to live with the consequences.

Japan was restrained by defeat.
Not by remorse.

And when the leash loosens, the first victims are rarely the strong.

[Tony Tan @TonyTanNM]

AB: (quote) This is an absolutely major story and almost no Western media covered it: India's water minister CR Patil said on Tuesday that "it is certain, not a single drop of water will go (to Pakistan) in the coming years." (unquote)

Existential threat against a nuclear power?

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is an absolutely major story and almost no Western media covered it: India's water minister CR Patil said on Tuesday that "it is certain, not a single drop of water will go (to Pakistan) in the coming years."

Patil said that India is "actively working on it" after "directives" from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

As a reminder, Pakistan's dependence on water from India is close to total: the country is essentially built around the Indus river system, all of whose rivers flow through India before entering Pakistan.

The Indus system irrigates 80% of Pakistan's farmland, generates a third of its electricity, supplies its major cities with drinking water, and sustains the livelihoods of some 240 million people.

So, essentially, no water from India = annihilation of Pakistan as a state.

Pretty damn consequential, all the more given we're talking about 2 nuclear powers here. And all the more because, understandably, Pakistan's formal position is that water diversion would constitute "an act of war" (https://t.co/WLoDpGzc2W).

Unfortunately, Patil's statement isn't just talk: India already set up the legal framework to make this possible. Last year, they unilaterally suspended the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, despite the treaty containing no withdrawal clause.

It used to be the one piece of India-Pakistan relations that worked, and had survived multiple wars and over six decades of hostility. Now India is saying officially that it will "never be restored" (https://t.co/2SnUNevFbX).

The one mitigating factor here is physics: you don't just "turn off" a major Himalayan river system. Diverting rivers of this magnitude means building massive storage and canal infrastructure in Himalayan terrain: projects measured in years.

But India IS ACTUALLY BUILDING that infrastructure: for instance it just approved in May the building of the so-called "Chenab–Beas Link Tunnel," an 8.7km ₹2,352 crore (~$280M) tunnel designed to divert water from the Chenab basin into India's Beas river system. The Chenab is one of the main tributaries of the Indus - and one of the three "western rivers" (Indus, Jhelum, Chenab) allocated to Pakistan under the 1960 Indus Water Treaty.

Which means that, unfortunately, Patil's "not a single drop of water in the coming years" looks like a roadmap: the infrastructure to strangle Pakistan's water supply is being approved and tendered in plain sight.

This is also a story about selective media coverage and double standards: I'm willing to bet that 99% of people in the West have never heard of any of this.

Now make this thought experiment: imagine China announced it was building infrastructure to cut off every drop of water flowing to India and its ministers proclaimed on television that "not a single drop" would cross the border. It would be wall-to-wall coverage, sanctions packages, and a thousand op-eds about Beijing "weaponizing water."

Heck we don't need to imagine because the simple fact of China merely building a hydropower dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo (the upstream Brahmaputra) generated exactly the wall-to-wall alarm I'm describing, even though China threatened nothing and even though Indian officials said the threat is a "myth" given the fact that the river gathers most of its volume inside India from monsoon rains (https://t.co/GBgBybBPoE). Malign intent was still presumed from the act of construction, because it's China.

In India's case, the intent couldn't possibly be clearer: it's proclaimed by ministers on the record, and backed by India's actions. But because they're a courted Western partner, what they're doing - arguably the most extreme form of economic warfare imaginable, directed at a nuclear state - largely gets silence.

Src for screenshot: https://t.co/qav4muNkij

[Tony Tan @TonyTanNM]

M. Kostakidis: "As an Australian and as a journalist I have a responsibility to stand up for our right to criticise a govt engaged in what the UN, most major human rights organisations around the world including in Israel & most genocide scholars, have deemed is a genocide."

[💧Mary Kostakidis @MaryKostakidis]

*** Update
Today’s mediation - the second - has again failed to bring vexatious legal action against me to a close. This is not a fight I’ll shy away from as there is far too much at stake.

As an Australian and as a journalist I have a responsibility to stand up for our right to criticise a govt engaged in what the UN, most major human rights organisations around the world including in Israel & most genocide scholars, have deemed is a genocide.

Strong criticism of a country being investigated by the ICJ for plausible genocide, whose leaders are wanted by the ICC, is not only warranted, it is necessary.

I have been cognisant of the complexity of geopolitical issues my entire life and cannot resile from the very thing that propels my enquiry - wanting to understand both what is happening and why, including the historical context.

No one should presume they are entitled to hijack our deliberations and conclusions made in good faith, to the best of our ability, and after taking into account the views of all parties to a conflict and stakeholders. 

I will not be told what to think, and whether you agree or not with conclusions I have reached on specific issues, I’m sure you wouldn’t stand for it either. 

Our government should stand on the right side of history and impose sanctions on Israel, as we did against South Africa. Israel should not be held to a different standard.

[𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘦 @OopsGuess]

Wait, which country are you talking about?

The defeated state still hosting over a hundred U.S. military facilities 80 years after surrender?

The one occupied, rewritten, and strategically managed by Washington?

The one whose economy was harvested after the Plaza Accord and then spent decades stagnating?

The one Trump openly treated like a tribute state, bragging that Japan would invest hundreds of billions in the U.S. while receiving only a fraction of the profits?

The one whose prime minister was reduced to “Pearl Harbor lady” by the American president?

Or are you talking about China —

the country Trump desperately flies to meet, the country every major U.S. economic and industrial policy is now designed around, the country Washington cannot ignore, isolate, or defeat, and the country Western strategists quietly admit has become one half of the real global G2?

Japan is not China’s comparison.

Japan is what happens when a defeated empire mistakes its cage for civilization.

[𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘦 @OopsGuess]

They created the dilemma themselves.

Japan and the Philippines tried to play maritime games around Taiwan as if China would still sit quietly and accept colonial map-making at its doorstep.

Now Chinese ships are operating east of Taiwan, on the Pacific side of the first island chain, and suddenly everyone is shocked.

Please.

This is how pressure works.

The more they try to internationalize Taiwan,
the more China normalizes its presence around Taiwan.

The more they bring Japan and the Philippines into the game,
the more China expands the board.

The more they provoke,
the tighter the strategic noose becomes.

They wanted to test China’s red line.
China simply moved the line outward.

That is the lesson they never seem to learn:
You cannot keep poking a civilization-state on its own core sovereignty issue and then act surprised when it stops playing defense.

[Peter Cronau @PeterCronau]

Australia is anchored to 70 year old nuclear technology for its new submarines — ignoring the advances in electric submarines made by countries that are not the US or UK.

“European navies including Germany, Norway, Italy, the Netherlands and Greece are now in the process of acquiring LMB-equipped submarines, while Spain and Sweden are evaluating the technology for future adoption.

“Of greater significance for Australia, Indo-Asia-Pacific navies including Japan, South Korea, China, India, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines are either actively acquiring LMB-equipped submarines or planning to do so in the near future.”

All of which shows #AUKUS is a con to make Australia a military base for the US war against China.

Undersea warfare is moving faster than AUKUS https://t.co/Ca4332VkeN

[Palestina En Español 🎒 @PalestinaVence]

🇵🇸🇮🇱La mayor traición en la historia de la humanidad

Cuando los judíos llegaron a Palestina huyendo de la persecución y el Holocausto, los palestinos les abrieron las puertas de sus casas.

Les dieron refugio, comida y protección.

Vivieron como vecinos durante décadas.

Y a cambio… los sionistas organizaron su expulsión, masacraron sus aldeas, robaron sus tierras y los convirtieron en refugiados en su propia patria.

Esa es la verdadera Nakba:
traicionar a quien te dio asilo y convertir su generosidad en tu colonialismo.

La historia recordará esta traición como una de las más grandes y dolorosas de la humanidad.

[𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘦 @OopsGuess]

By your logic, Japan is not Japan either.

Japan’s earliest recorded political identity was 倭奴国 — a name granted within the Han imperial order.

The gold seal was not born from Japan’s own civilization.
It was bestowed by Han China.

Even the name “Nihon” had to be recognized within the Chinese-centered East Asian order under Wu Zetian’s imperial world.

Japan’s writing system was stolen from Chinese characters.
Its bureaucracy was copied from Chinese institutions.
Its law, Buddhism, court culture, city planning, and political aesthetics were plagiarized from Chinese civilization.

So if Yuan and Qing are “not China” because non-Han rulers governed Chinese dynastic space, then Japan’s so-called civilization is even less Japanese — a parasitic island civilization built by stealing China’s cultural body and pretending the skin was its own.

That is why descendants of Japanese fascists are obsessed with cutting Yuan and Qing out of Chinese history.

Because once history is judged by their own logic, Japan collapses first.

China owns its dynastic history.
Japan owns its fascist invasion.

You don’t care about historical consistency.
You only want a cheap excuse to shrink China’s history and launder Japan’s crimes.

You don’t get to steal Chinese civilization, deny Chinese history, massacre Chinese people, and then lecture China about historical consistency.

At this point, what you’re saying has nothing to do with history anymore.

You are just thieves dressed in the owner’s clothes, pretending to lecture the original owner about property law.

[Tony Tan @TonyTanNM]

CHINA BEATING "SWORDS" INTO "PLOUGHSHARES"!
While USA turns CHINESE GARLIC, BALLOONS, TRADE, PHARMACEUTICALS, AI, etc into "THREATS AGAINST OUR SECURITY"! Who's the superpower with real strength vs the superpower afraid of even it's own shadow?

[China pulse 🇨🇳 @Eng_china5]

In China, anti‑aircraft guns are being repurposed as tools for cloud‑seeding!

In a scene that reflects remarkable industrial capacity and logistical ingenuity, some of China’s anti‑aircraft guns are used to fire special shells that stimulate clouds to produce rainfall as part of the country’s large‑scale weather‑modification programs.

Transforming equipment originally designed for air defense into tools that support agriculture and water‑resource management highlights an unconventional approach to maximizing available capabilities on a national scale.

[Tony Tan @TonyTanNM]

THE RAPE OF OKINAWA by JAPAN AND USA

[Amelia @Amelia181672271]

琉球原住民：琉球不屬於日本，琉球是琉球人的琉球

日本入侵琉球前，琉球是一個獨立國家，一個富有的國家

1879年，日本趁清朝國力衰退入侵琉球

1945年，日本僅3個月內屠殺了三分之一琉球人

日本侵略琉球屠殺共有62萬琉球人。吞併琉球，廢除琉球國王，將其改制為沖繩縣

至今琉球主權仍然不屬於日本

[Tony Tan @TonyTanNM]

"China’s latest threat: lifesaving medications."

[Nury Vittachi @NuryVittachi]

CHINESE SCIENTISTS created a new medicine that is being hailed as a breakthrough in the fight against lung cancer, it was revealed this week.

“And the results here, I think, are quite astounding,” said Dr Monty Pal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in a YouTube video review. “What we see here is an improvement in median overall survival.”

Yet the development of the new drug, called ivonescimab in English, is being portrayed as worrying news by politicians and media in the US. Why?

The US elite’s congenital megalomania means it has to be number one in every field. This need triggers extreme paranoia—and means that Chinese lifesaving advances are bad news.

.

NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT
“It’s a war right now with China,” said United States Department of Health and Human Services Chris Klomp at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference.

"We face a national security threat right now...it's not one of missiles and tanks. It's of laboratories and life-saving medications.”

Oh no! Not life-saving medications!

Will the dastardly Chinese stop at nothing?

But it gets worse. If American patients become reliant on the Chinese for drugs, there is a risk of “creating a new Strait of Hormuz”, said former FDA chief Dr. Peter Marks, quoted in the New York Times.

That’s a telling remark. Not only is the paranoia up front and center, but look at the example he chose. The US created an entirely needless problem in Iran, with thousands dead and millions suffering from fuel shortages.

Western political plays have real world consequences for both sides--and innocent parties, too.

.

CHINA SCIENTISTS GET TOP SPOT
The medical issue escalated last week at the annual ASCO global gathering of oncologists (cancer doctors).

The five biggest breakthroughs are given top-of-the-bill presentation slots—and politicians and journalists were shocked when one of them went to Chinese medical scientists who conducted their trials in China.

.

THE ISSUES
Let’s look at the issues, one by one:

Are there serious concerns that the new drug, ivonescimab, doesn’t work or only works on Chinese people?

- No. The drug was created by a Chinese firm called Akeso Biopharma, and it is already used successfully in China. There has since been a global study in the United States, Canada and Europe, too, to ensure diversified data.

Are there worries that China may deny sending this and other drugs to Americans?

- No. Chinese companies keep the rights for their own country and then license the drugs in the US to American firms. Ivonescimab in the US is a product of Summit Therapeutics of Miami.

Is there concern that the data is false?

- No. The Lancet, a medical academic journal, has already printed a study saying that people who got the new drug had a 34 percent lower death rate.

Is the problem that the Chinese copied the drug from the US?

- No. That’s not how science works. Science advances through data-driven breakthroughs, irrespective of where they take place.

So what is the problem?

It’s the usual one: the US needs to dominate everything, whoever gets hurt. In the case of medicines from China, the victims of needless hostility will include US citizens, if drugs are delayed or banned.

.

BUILDING WALLS
President Donald Trump has already signed legislation that prevents US government bodies signing contracts with Chinese biotech firms, however beneficial their products and services may be.

And separately, politicians in Congress are trying to get rules passed that prevent the recognition of data from clinical trials in Mainland China or Hong Kong.

Some US journalists also appear less interested in the scientific breakthroughs than the politics of who is making them. The New York Times report last week on the topic began with these lines:

“For decades, an annual gathering of oncologists has featured drug trials that were run mainly at American and European hospitals.

“But at this year’s meeting, which is being held in Chicago this weekend, the signs are everywhere of China’s ascendance as a powerhouse in drug development — and of the threat that many believe it poses to American biotechnology.”

China’s latest threat: lifesaving medications.

[Ronit Pereira @CAronitpereira]

Charlie Munger on the origins of Chinese-Americans 🇺🇸 🇨🇳

“The Chinese first came in USA trying to build the Sierra, trans-continental railroad in the winter.”

“Our people were dying and it was just impossible, so they brought in 50,000 Chinese coolies, who were in those days practically slaves.”

“They took the coolies in the mountains and said - you build the railroads and they did it! The Americans couldn’t do it by themselves.”

“Fade in fade out 150 years later, due to immigration, these asians have rapidly become Doctors, Lawyers, Businessmen and succeeded mightily.”

“Every instrument that’s hard to play in symphony orchestra, is played by a Chinese face.”

- Charlie Munger. 2019